Tintoretto
[Jacopo Robusti]

Born: 1518, Venice

Married:
c. 1553, Faustina Episcopi

Died: 31
May 1594, Venice

Jacopo Robusti, one of the last great painters of the Renaissance
and a precursor of the Baroque period, first became known as TINTORETTO
because his father was a dyer. In his Companion Guide to Venice
Hugh Honour observes (p. 69), "Titian
answered [Venice's] craving for sensuous richness; Tintoretto its
taste for mystical fantasy." Another writer has said that Tintoretto's
work is characterized by "dramatic effects, bizarre juxtapositions
of images and extraordinarily fluid brushwork."

Umberto Fortis
comments inThe Uffizi: A Guide to the Gallery (Venice: Edizione
Storti, 1980, p. 107) that Tintoretto "took from the Central Italian
'Mannerists' working in Venice and, through them, from Parmigianino
and Michelangelo, the basis for a new dynamic handling of form and singular
lighting solutions to animate the plastic values of his figures and
his chromatic range, so different from the solid impasto employed
by Titian."

Art historian
S. J. Freedberg concludes in Painting in Italy, 1500-1600 (p.
531): "Tintoretto's style became the dominant model of the Venetian
school in the late sixteenth century."

The Miracle
of the Slave (1548), now in the Accademia Museum, is sometimes called
the painting that made Tintoretto's reputation, but he moved quickly
to other triumphs. Another of his notable masterworks is Marriage
at Cana (1561).

No one who has
visited the Scuola Grande di S. Rocco will ever doubt that Tintoretto
was enormously prolific. There the walls and ceilings of room after
room are covered by vast canvases executed by Tintoretto and his studio,
1564-88. Of the Crucifixion there, Henry James wrote: "Surely
no single picture in the world contains more of human life; there is
everything in it, including the most exquisite beauty."

Tintoretto's studio
was an important contributor to his work. He was assisted there by his
daughter Marietta (1556-90) and by his sons Domenico (c. 1560-1635)
(who served as foreman) and Marco (1561-1637). (Tintoretto and his wife
had three sons and five daughters.) Following his father's death, Domenico
continued to create portraits of prominent Venetians, including a portrait
(now lost) of Cardinal Patriarch Federico Cornaro.

Tintoretto's portrait
of Alvise Cornaro (B-26), executed c. 1560-5, is displayed in the
collection of the Pitti Palace, Florence. His c. 1588 self-portrait
(shown above) is in the collection of the Louvre, Paris.